Archive for June, 2011

Lenie and our son, Sam, will be hosting a Backwoods Home Magazine booth at the Oregon Green Expo at the Jackson County Fairgrounds in Medford, Oregon, this weekend. If you’re in the area, stop by and say hi. Expo hours are Saturday 10 to 5 and Sunday 10 to 4. This is a pretty small show, but we thought we’d do it since it’s only a 3-hour drive from home.

The show has booths operated by companies who offer a product, service or resource that saves energy or creates healthier and more self-reliant homes.

This is our first time doing this show. Sometimes these small shows are surprisingly fun.

Lenie and I will not be there, but the Tee-shirt offer of the last few years will be in effect, namely, wear a BHM Tee-shirt to the fair and Jackie will give you a free anthology. If you don’t have a BHM Tee-shirt, you can buy one from Jackie at the fair (but she’ll only have a half dozen or so) or make your own, as several people have done in previous fairs. At the recent Mother Earth News fair in Puyallup, Wash., Nina Hooper of Seattle came up to the BHM booth sporting a home-made BHM purse. That’s close enough to a Tee-shirt so she qualified.

Also, if you have a copy of our Issue No. 1, you can trade it in at the MREA Fair for $50 worth of merchandise, based on retail value. At the TMEN Puyallup Fair, Larry Wilson of Marysville, Wash., brought his Issue No. 1 to the fair, but wouldn’t part with it.

BHM employee Toby Stanley, Jr, and I won the Tin Cup Golf Tournament at Cedar Bend Golf Course near Gold Beach this weekend. Actually, we won the “net score” championship, that is, after deducting our handicap. Toby is a 12 handicap and I am a 22 so we got a 17 handicap for the tournament. We were in 7th place at the end of yesterday, but pulled out the win today on the final hole when Toby sunk a long birdie putt. We both shot an 84 today, which is the lowest score I’ve ever shot in my life. There were eighteen two-man teams.

Toby is a former member of the GBHS golf team, and he is accustomed to shooting in the high 70s or low 80s. Two other former GBHS team members, Tyler Ward and Dane Ross, won the “gross score” championship. Two current members of the GBHS team, son Robby Duffy and Matt Anderson, took second place for lowest gross score.

Son Robby and several friends graduated from high school this evening. Robby was among the 49 kids graduating from Gold Beach High School. He’s headed for Oregon State University to study engineering. We gave out four scholarships, three to kids graduating tonight and one to an employee, Toby Stanley, who got his GED last week.

The TMEN Fair in Puyallup, Washington was terrific. It was better than the old preparedness shows and even better than the MREA fair in Wisconsin, which had been the best fair in the country. It is almost exactly the type of show I have envisioned for many years since the preparedness shows ended, but I didn’t have the deep pockets to take the financial risk of putting on such an event. Every aspect of self-reliance, from sawing big logs into boards to classes in canning food. My hat is off to Bryan Welch, publisher of TMEN, for putting this fair together.

I hadn’t planned on attending TMEN’s next two fairs in San Rafael, California in September and in Seven Springs, Pennsylvania, also in September, but after this experience I’ll probably attend both. Mother Earth News has come a log way back to her roots under Bryan Welch; John Shuttleworth would have been pleased. I’ll help Mother promote their fairs however I can.

By the way, she’s slender and tall, and damn good looking. No photo here though. I didn’t even ask. We had a very enjoyable two-day conversation.